The Tonberries
Taxonomy: Spoken (Tonberry)
Description: Tonberries are the tragic Nymians afflicted by the plague of Bitoso, sent to smite Nym down by the Mhachi. Some of these figures apparently date back to the Fifth Astral Era, while others are more recent births. They have been driven quite mad by their fate, tragically, and are very aggressive. A particularly huge variant of the tonberry was apparently found in the Palace, nicknamed the stalker, which pursued foes at a slow pace. This creature was likely swollen due to a wild imbalance of aether, resulting in its size.
Treasure Hunter
Taxonomy: Spoken (Various)
Description: Unfortunately, not all who approach the Palace do so with innocent curiosity or kindness in their minds and both the adventurers who cleared the Palace and the research team itself encountered treasure hunters, jumped up bandits that were often particularly aggressive.
Bronze Buzzard
Taxonomy: Cloudkin (Vulture)
Description: Vultures are commonly symbols of impurity in cultures due to their reliance on carrion to survive, although they are also fully capable of hunting down a target with their bladed talons and claws. These creatures are named for their home, Bronze Lake.
Bronze Beetle
Taxonomy: Vilekin (Beetle)
Description: Beetles such as these are common throughout Hydaelyn, although their smaller kin such as fireflies are much more common.
The Slugs
Taxonomy: Wavekin (Slug)
Description: The giant slugs of Eorzea are nuisances on a grand scale due to the oozing secretions that coat their flesh, which have been observed as acidic enough to eat away even stone on some occasions. This has earned them a reputation amongst the inhabitants of the Aldenard, and they are often killed on sight or trapped using ale, which attracts them. There were two kinds of slug in the Palace, the first of which were nicknamed Gear Grease and the second Cog Oil. These seem to have been named such for the fact that their emissions can be substituted for intended oils used to lubricate machinery, an important application in the Palace due to the wealth of ancient, rusting machinery.
Capabilities: The cog oil slugs were capable of loosing a tide of harmful ‘aqueous discharge’ upon their foes.
Pug Pugil
Taxonomy: Wavekin (Pugil)
Description: Bizzare wavekin that propel themselves in a primitive form of flight using a wind-aspected gas filled bladder within their body, pugil are famed for their voracious appetite and single-minded attitude towards food. These creatures draw the name pug from their hideous aspect.
Etymology Notes: Pugil means fist, or boxer, in latin, which may refer to the aggressive outlook of the pugil in Eorzea. Pug is an alternative name for tonberries, drawn from old terms for fey creatures like hobgoblins.
The Keeper of Halidom
Taxonomy: Beastkin (Goobbue)
Description: Huge, physically powerful creatures, Goobbue such as these play host to moss and lichen which they cultivate with water in dry times in exchange for it providing camouflage to the beast. Goobbue are utterly ferocious, seizing their prey in their massive hands and bringing them up to their cavernous, many-fanged maw in hunger. This particular Goobbue earned its name as a dry affection from the scholars studying the Palace, due to its self-appointed role as guardian of the inner reaches of the sacred structure.
Capabilities: Those who managed to approach too close to the Keeper testified to the power of its assaults. It was capable of launching physical ‘beatdowns’ with its hands, as well as the more grotesque techniques of its species. This included a ‘moldy sneeze’ in which it exhaled a sneeze of toxic mold which slowed those it infected, and when that failed it could hawk up ‘moldy phlegm’ and launch it at speed towards a target. Its colossal lungs were also also capable of a grand ‘inhale’ in which it sucked even full grown Roegadyn to its mouth. When particularly distressed, the beast was able to shake itself and loose great plumes of poisonous spores from its symbiotic flora colonies, nicknamed ‘goobbue’s grief.’
Etymology Notes: A halidom is a sacred place, and the Palace is absolutely sacred to Oschon, explaining its name.
The Ghosts
Taxonomy: Ashkin (Ghost)
Description: Despite folklore to the contrary, ghosts are actually fully corporeal creatures, solid to the touch. They are typically said to be bound to the mortal world due to an unfinished purpose of some form. These creatures were the dead of Nym, those that perished inside the Palace of the plague or of any other cause. The overwhelming negative emotion of the place, coupled with the wrongs done to those within and the aetheric inbalance of the Fifth Umbral Calamity would make for a potent mix able to raise ashkin easily merely by ambiently existing. Two forms of these ghosts existed in the Palace, Nymian citizens and the Curates, who were priests of Oschon before their death. They may have been infected, or have chosen to stay in the Palace to minister to those suffering in their hallowed halls.
Etymology Notes: A curate is a member of the clergy assigned as an assistant to a more senior priest, illustrating their role as priests of Oschon.
Soldier of Nym
Taxonomy: Ashkin (Wight)
Description: Dangerous creatures typically believed animated by dark sorcery, wights are skeletal undead spoken possessed by an enduring hatred of the living. These wights were likely the soldiery, perhaps even the Royal Marines, of Nym that were either infected by the plague or dispatched to guard and imprison those quarantined.
Capabilities: Wights are commonly capable of marshalling the dark aethers possessing their wretched forms and imbuing it into their blades for a strike commonly named the ‘hell slash’ by terrified peasantry. This is in reference to a common myth that the wights are ruled by some grand entity of the Seven Hells, a supposition that has no theological basis. This particular flavor of wight was also capable of ‘soul draining’ the aether of a target, weakening it and strengthening the wight.
Giant Bavarois
Taxonomy: Voidsent (Flan)
Description: Lowly ranked inhabitants of the 10th rung of the voidal hierarchy, the humble flan is a terrible beast capable of mimicking language crudely as a trapping tactic. Academic opinion is that these vile creatures form out of matter that comes into contact with the all-consuming, all-destroying influence of the Void. This creature was named in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek manner by the adventurers that slew it in reference to the flan name of the creatures. The beast was also capable of summoning smaller, different colored versions of itself that were somehow able to use distinct elemental magics.
Capabilities: This creature was able to fling its mighty, gooey form around in an ‘amorphic flail’ capable of shattering bones.
Etymology Notes: A Bavarois is a French dessert made out of gelatin and whipped cream, not unlike a panna cotta.
The Tonberry King
Taxonomy: Spoken (Tonberry)
Description: This individual had been a high mage of Nym in a past life, as denoted by the rich red robes typical of that order. Those who studied the ‘king’s’ aether after his death concluded that his rage over him and his fellow infected being abandoned at the bottom of Bronze Lake by his kith and kin kindled within him, mixed with his magical power and spread across the tonberries of the palace, driving them quite insane with rage. With his death, some speculate that the surviving tonberries may yet mentally recover.
Capabilities: The Tonberry King was apparently as capable with his blade as the rest of his species, including the ‘sharpening’ effect of their magics, channeling aether tempered by rage into the blade to accentuate its cutting power. It also possessed a number of additional abilities, including channeling ‘everybody’s grudge’ in which it gathered the hatred of its fellow tonberries and unleashed it in a gout of harmful aether.
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